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sabrinamarii found this in an old 2004 post. I remember writing it while watching the Pema videos I want to purchase for Neophyte and Second Degree work. It's potentially useful for anyone grappling with recurrent stress and frustration and it also has specific recommendations for those who want to explore meditation.
I am discovering that an enormous number of Buddhist concepts and words have been translated in such a way as to suggest that they mean the *opposite* of what they actually mean. For example, "Shenpa" is usually translated as "attachment" and the opposite of shenpa is translated as "detachment". This is *so far off * of what is intended that it actively misdirects the English speaking thinker.
"Shenpa" means regression: being lost in a sea of habitual bad feelings, anger, "hookedness", upset that replays like a loop in your head. The opposite of Shenpa is NOT "detachment" at all, the way we understand that word. It's noting your thoughts as you start to get worked up and then simply interrupting the regression and becoming calm again---or even better, *using* those upset and angery feelings to generate compassion.
For example: your mom says something really cutting or denigrating to you. You start to feel your usual anger and replay your loop of resentful thoughts, as you always do. But wait...you have been meditating. You have gained some control over your mind. You see what's happening inside your mind and heart as it's happening. You pull back, mentally. Instead of raging internally at your mother as usual, you turn your thoughts to all those other humans *just like you* who are feeling the intense pain of being denigrated by a dearly loved parent. You don't shy away from that pain. You allow yourself to feel it. You can do this because you've trained your mind, and experience has taught you that you *can* learn to tolerate the full pain of what you are feeling without striking out, freaking out, or erupting.
Instead, you use the pain to connect with all those other people who are suffering/have suffered the same pain. If you are a really advanced meditator, you can even turn your thoughts towards compassion for your mother, and the ugly, unresolved shenpa she carries that has prompted her to be so cruel to her own child. You feel sad for her, because she has so little awareness of the hurt she is perpetrating and so little ability to recognise her own shenpa or the way she perpetrates it upon herself and everyone around her. Because of this lack of understanding, she has no hope of extricating herself from it. As you stretch your ability to feel compassion, your empathy for her becoms deeper and stronger and guess what...you no longer feel like shit inside when she does this to you. You've freed yourself.
In this way, you use what was initially a lure into your private hell to first, calm yourself down, and then, stretch your own ability to be compassionate towards others--even perpetrators of misery.
And this whole cycle of events, in all its complexity, is translated into English as "detachment"--- exactly the opposite of what it *actually* entails----fully feeling your own suffering, then connecting to the suffering of others, and THEN generating great compassion for those others around you.
So, anyway, I tell you this to illustrate why I only venture into Buddhist texts with the help of fully bicultural English/Tibetan speaking Buddhist teachers, who can do the frequent and time-consuming translation for me. I don't even try to read the famous Buddhist text we are exploring on Thursday nights through Pema's teaching videos. I read it and get one totally unimpressive view of what is being said, and then she opens her mouth and explains what is actually meant, and it's NOTHING like what I got from reading the same words. I simply don't try yet to do it on my own. Basically, I've identified 2 teachers who can do this shifting translation effectively so far: Pema Chodron (American-born Buddhist nun who raised a family, studied with Tibetan teachers for decades and now runs an abbey) and Sakyong Mipham (fluent in both languages, raised in the U.S., Scotland and Tibet, fully functional in both languages and cultures).
So I need to go back and check on the story, cause it's easy to misunderstand these concepts.
If you ever want a book on how to start meditating---really detailed, really clear, and really a close description of the stages of the process with all those benchmarks English speaking intellectuals crave---get "Turning the Mind into an Ally", by Sakyong Miphram. Tibetan practitioners have actually spelled the whole experience of learning to meditate out in excrutiating detail---the three challenges to meditating and the nine stages of learning to meditate---but god help the English speaker who wanted to understand these very precise instructions prior to this decade.
Fortunately, this author does a GREAT job of spelling out what is meant for current generations of American English speakers. He does it on pages 114-126. Real clear, real precise. Exactly what will happen. Then you can take the description and test it against your own experience.
I am discovering that an enormous number of Buddhist concepts and words have been translated in such a way as to suggest that they mean the *opposite* of what they actually mean. For example, "Shenpa" is usually translated as "attachment" and the opposite of shenpa is translated as "detachment". This is *so far off * of what is intended that it actively misdirects the English speaking thinker.
"Shenpa" means regression: being lost in a sea of habitual bad feelings, anger, "hookedness", upset that replays like a loop in your head. The opposite of Shenpa is NOT "detachment" at all, the way we understand that word. It's noting your thoughts as you start to get worked up and then simply interrupting the regression and becoming calm again---or even better, *using* those upset and angery feelings to generate compassion.
For example: your mom says something really cutting or denigrating to you. You start to feel your usual anger and replay your loop of resentful thoughts, as you always do. But wait...you have been meditating. You have gained some control over your mind. You see what's happening inside your mind and heart as it's happening. You pull back, mentally. Instead of raging internally at your mother as usual, you turn your thoughts to all those other humans *just like you* who are feeling the intense pain of being denigrated by a dearly loved parent. You don't shy away from that pain. You allow yourself to feel it. You can do this because you've trained your mind, and experience has taught you that you *can* learn to tolerate the full pain of what you are feeling without striking out, freaking out, or erupting.
Instead, you use the pain to connect with all those other people who are suffering/have suffered the same pain. If you are a really advanced meditator, you can even turn your thoughts towards compassion for your mother, and the ugly, unresolved shenpa she carries that has prompted her to be so cruel to her own child. You feel sad for her, because she has so little awareness of the hurt she is perpetrating and so little ability to recognise her own shenpa or the way she perpetrates it upon herself and everyone around her. Because of this lack of understanding, she has no hope of extricating herself from it. As you stretch your ability to feel compassion, your empathy for her becoms deeper and stronger and guess what...you no longer feel like shit inside when she does this to you. You've freed yourself.
In this way, you use what was initially a lure into your private hell to first, calm yourself down, and then, stretch your own ability to be compassionate towards others--even perpetrators of misery.
And this whole cycle of events, in all its complexity, is translated into English as "detachment"--- exactly the opposite of what it *actually* entails----fully feeling your own suffering, then connecting to the suffering of others, and THEN generating great compassion for those others around you.
So, anyway, I tell you this to illustrate why I only venture into Buddhist texts with the help of fully bicultural English/Tibetan speaking Buddhist teachers, who can do the frequent and time-consuming translation for me. I don't even try to read the famous Buddhist text we are exploring on Thursday nights through Pema's teaching videos. I read it and get one totally unimpressive view of what is being said, and then she opens her mouth and explains what is actually meant, and it's NOTHING like what I got from reading the same words. I simply don't try yet to do it on my own. Basically, I've identified 2 teachers who can do this shifting translation effectively so far: Pema Chodron (American-born Buddhist nun who raised a family, studied with Tibetan teachers for decades and now runs an abbey) and Sakyong Mipham (fluent in both languages, raised in the U.S., Scotland and Tibet, fully functional in both languages and cultures).
So I need to go back and check on the story, cause it's easy to misunderstand these concepts.
If you ever want a book on how to start meditating---really detailed, really clear, and really a close description of the stages of the process with all those benchmarks English speaking intellectuals crave---get "Turning the Mind into an Ally", by Sakyong Miphram. Tibetan practitioners have actually spelled the whole experience of learning to meditate out in excrutiating detail---the three challenges to meditating and the nine stages of learning to meditate---but god help the English speaker who wanted to understand these very precise instructions prior to this decade.
Fortunately, this author does a GREAT job of spelling out what is meant for current generations of American English speakers. He does it on pages 114-126. Real clear, real precise. Exactly what will happen. Then you can take the description and test it against your own experience.
